


Bought the Farm

by SumDumMuffin



Series: Absolute Hoodwitch Armageddon [9]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:48:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22619632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SumDumMuffin/pseuds/SumDumMuffin
Summary: Glynda buys a farm as part of her mid-life crisis and developed a relationship with the neighboring farmgirl.
Relationships: Glynda Goodwitch/Ruby Rose
Series: Absolute Hoodwitch Armageddon [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616476
Comments: 5
Kudos: 30





	Bought the Farm

**Author's Note:**

> I guarantee no expertise in romance, rural life, agriculture, or astronomy. 
> 
> Inspired by _Stardew Valley_

"Ugh," Glynda said, as she uprooted a log on her newly acquired but long-abandoned rural farmstead. It took literally all her energy. And she didn't know any carpentry, so a lot of it was, just, trying different things until she stopped failing. 

Farming was hard. Especially since Glynda had spent the last 30 years sitting in an office, which was rather dissimilar to most of the skills required for farming. 

The upside was that she managed to be able to afford paying a mysterious benefactor for a rural farmstead to early-retire (except also do more work than she'd ever done in corporate finance), which theoretically was the aspiration of everyone else in her position. And honestly, it sounded fun at the time. 

Glynda opted to roll the stump to the edge of her house, which was only partially repaired. She had managed to get the door to appear to close, if you didn’t look too close and tilted your head just right. One slight consolation was that the stump was just tall enough to rest her head on, and Glynda was already dirty enough that she’d, probably go to the public bathhouse to bathe this evening since her bathroom was un-maintained and even then, one of those really old showers that had a hanging water supply... 

"Oh, hey there," said a woman.

Glynda looked up.

There was a farmgirl, on a horse, in dark red overalls, with dark hair and brilliant silver eyes, was on the road.

"You must be the new neighbor." The girl smiled.

Glynda took a moment for her brain to cycle through a short list of anxiety about how her hair looked and how much dirt she had on her shirt and that speaking of shirts, her current one wasn't the most flattering one-

"Oh!" Glynda refreshed her smile, "Yes, I, moved in a few days ago,but I haven't gotten around to, meeting everyone in town..."

The girl expertly dismounted her horse to land right in front of Glynda. It turned out, she was almost a head shorter than Glynda was. 

"I'm Ruby," she said. she Held her hand out. "Ruby Rose."

"Glynda Goodwitch," she said. She shook the hand. "Charmed."

They looked at each other, smiling silently, for a few seconds.

Ruby coughed. "Well, I gotta harvest the rest of the spring wheat, but I can treat you to lunch at my place before hand, as a welcoming gift?"

"Oh!" Glynda said. Damn, Ruby had asked _her_ to lunch, lookit that. 

Ruby made an awkward smile. "I also know a bit of woodworking myself, so like, I could help you fix those obvious holes in your walls." She leaned to look over at Glynda's house. "I could help you nail your door on straight, at the very least."

"Yeah," Glynda said. She nodded. "Nailing things straight isn't one of my strong suits." 

Ruby chuckled and coughed, and Glynda thought she maybe saw the hint of a blush on her cheeks.

"But, I think lunch would sound lovely," Glynda said, to fill the air.

Ruby smiled. "Cool! We make our own bread, and we have some recently-baked cookies."

"That sounds lovely! I can bring something to drink, then-" Glynda turned to her house.

"Oh, that's not-" Ruby stammered.

Glynda rushed inside her house and pulled open one of the card board boxes by the door. She had managed to seal most of the holes in the walls and floor with boxes she hadn't finished unpacking or bulk purchases of city food she probably couldn't buy locally. 

She returned with a newly unwrapped glass bottle with some dark, carbonate liquid inside it. Ruby was waiting outside, and was petting her horse's face/snout area.

"Ah," Glynda said, "How old are you?"

"W-why do you need to know?" Ruby smushed her lips together.

Glynda checked the label on her honey lemonade kombucha. "It's got half of one percent alcohol by volume."

"Oh! Well, I am old enough to drink," Ruby said, "But I don't think that should matter, if it’s only half of one percent.”

Not unless you drink a whole case in an afternoon, Glynda didn't say aloud, from experience. "Right."

Ruby patted her horse, "And besides, drunk horse riding isn't as bad as drunk driving. Your horse can just, avoid crashing for you."

Glynda quashed the burgeoning idea in her head of really, really wanting to test exactly that.   


Ruby actually offered Glynda a ride on her horse, back, and while that did sound, rather lovely, Glynda didn't want to come on too strong to this cute literal girl-next-door on their first encounter. Plus, there existed the likelihood that Glynda would catastrophically fall off, or worse, almost fall off and end up grabbing onto Ruby in an awkward way. Ruby ended up just walking, reins in hand, next to Glynda, for the duration of the walk to Ruby's place.

"So, you like horses?"

"Oh, yeah," Ruby said. She patted her horse's snout. "Crescent here helps plow the fields and takes the crops to market, but she’s also a friend.”

Glynda nodded. “That’s cool. I never got into horses as a girl, but I know people who did.”

“I guess it's different if you’re a city girl,” Ruby said. “They’re not like, magical friendship creatures to us. Primarily, just, methods of transportation.”

“Hmm.” Glynda said.

Ruby tilted her head towards Glynda. “Do you think you’ll raise any animals on your farm?”

“Ah,” Glynda rubbed the back of her head. “That sounds like a long-term decision that I specifically moved to a farm to have to avoid.”

Ruby smushed her lips together. “Is that why ? Well, I hate to break the bad news to you, then, but um….”

Glynda waved the air. “I mean, I know it’s gonna be a lot of work in any case. But can’t I put it off, just for now?”

Ruby shrugged. “I don’t see why not. Though, if you got into farming to have an easy life, you're going to be disappointing..." 

Glynda leaned her head from side to side as she cogitated. "Well, I got into it for a lot of little reasons, I guess. I’m sure I didn’t expect it to be a panacea for all my accumulated ennui, but maybe I subconsciously did." 

Glynda nodded slowly. "Though if I had to pick one reason, it was to see the stars," Glynda said. She reached her hand out into the air, because it seemed like an appropriate motion to illustrate her point. "I always liked space, and you can't see them from the city."

Ruby perked up. "Oh? Yeah, we can see them pretty clearly from out here. I mean, I can only speak to this area specifically, but I think it's nice! Have you gone stargazing since you've got here?" 

"Yeah, actually," Glynda said, "Considering the state of my roof, it's rather non-optional for me at the moment." 

  
Ruby's house (or, according to the farm sign, the Rose/Xaio-Long farmstead- which suggested an interesting family history) was very fancy. It had the air of a persistent, long-term endeavor to improve the woodworking and the quilting and to decorate every part of the wall and unused part of the floor.it also meant every piece of furniture and every appliance was of a slightly different style, which among the clutter meant that the house really did look cozy and lived-in. Glynda wondered if her own home would look like this, someday.

Glynda took a seat in a corner of the room, at a small circular table with a wooden bowl of fruit and some random pieces of mail and half-finished origami.

Ruby cut the two of them a slice of cheese and a slice of bread, and brought a plate of cookies from a pan that had been laying on the table, along with some glasses for Glynda’s offering.

"So do you make all the ingredients for these?" Glynda took a bite of bread and cheese.

"Except for the chocolate chips, and the sugar," Ruby gestured to the cookies. "And occasionally walnuts.”

“That makes sense.”

“Since specializing in a specific type of produce takes time and energy and infrastructure, most of the farmhouses have their own niches,” Ruby said, “So I can get sugar from the Valkyrie farms, and we sell wheat to the people that want it. But we’re established enough that we like to experiment with new things, from time to time.”

Glynda nodded.

“Do you have an idea of what you’re going to grow?” Ruby said.

“Ah-” Glynda said. She refreshed her smile. “I, don’t know if I’ve thought that far ahead, yet…”

Ruby refreshed her smile. “Ok.”

There was a few moments of awkward silence. Glynda ate another cookies.

"So is this lemonade drink, just," Ruby eyed the informative blurb on the side of the bottle Glynda brought. "Someone who left it out too long until it went just bad enough to be tangy?”

Glynda shrugged. "I mean, probably. Or at least, that was how the original person made it. I think it's since made with a very controlled process so that it’s only ‘tangy’ bad rather than, like, a health liability.”

“Hmm,” Ruby said. She poured herself a cup of the honey lemonade kombucha. 

“Yeah,” Glynda said, “And it’s supposedly healthy, though I can’t remember the last time I could be certain I was healthy, to compare it to."

Ruby chuckled at that. 

Ruby went out to harvest her wheat after she was done with lunch. Glynda decided to watch her, mostly because she was still too tired to do anything else on her stead and didn't have anything more entertaining to do alone.

To Glynda’s surprise, Ruby procured a scythe and started cutting the overgrown grass the old fashioned way.

“Is that,” Glynda parsed, “More energy efficient than using a harvester?”

"It can be, depending on the farmer’s skill," Ruby said, She cut a whole row of wheat in one smooth motion. "I think it gives it a more personal touch. And it’s more exercise."

Glynda wasn’t in any position to refute those claims.

  
Ruby was rather hypnotizing as she swung her scythe with methodical purpose along the fields. Glynda found herself sitting on Ruby’s porch for the rest of the afternoon.   
  


  
  
  
  
Over the next few weeks, with Ruby's help, Glynda got her house fixed up to be livable, and had her first crop of pumpkins take to the soil.

(Glynda also managed to meet the rest of the town, but they weren't important.)

And by harvest season, Glynda had gotten in shape enough (and had purchased enough mechanical aids) to be able to farm a small crop of pumpkins.   
  
  
  
  
One night there was a knock at Glynda’s recently gussied up front door.

And Ruby was there, in a nice evening dress, with her hair done up (with a very cute rose barrette holding the hair out of the left side of her face), holding a basket in front of her with both her hands.

"So there's a meteor shower tonight," Ruby said. She coughed. “But, you know that, because you’ve been talking about it for weeks.”

“I have,” Glynda said. She smiled. “And I do know that.”

Ruby tilted her head down, sheepishly. “So I was wondering, um…”

Glynda adjusted her glasses and let her smile grow, since waiting for a cute girl to ask you out was one of the great joys of life. 

Ruby looked up with her eyes, biting her lip. "If, um, you'd like to go on a nighttime picnic with me, to watch it?” 

Glynda's heart rose. She smiled. "I would love to." 

Glynda had since gotten some experience in riding a horse, and riding a horse in tandem with someone else, so it did't seem too forward or awkward to put her arms around Ruby's waist as they . ANd even if she hadn't, well, it was probably a reasonable safety measure during nighttime horse ride to hold on tight to the rider. 

Ruby was warm, under Glynda's arms, and eminently hug-gable. 

Ruby pulled a blanket out from her supplies and unfurled it over a patch of grass, on the hill. She put the picnic basket down at the side and took a seat. Glynda sat down beside her. 

"So we had some unuse barrels around the farm," Ruby said, so I figured I'd try to, make some honey lemonade kombucha," Ruby said. She pulled a bottle out of her pack. "But I think I just made alcohol."

Glynda snickered. "Well, that's fine too, all things considered." She held her hand out to recieve a home-made bottle of accidental moonshine.

Glynda took a drink and the buzzing in her stomach combined with the giddiness in her heart to give her the courage to reach out and rest her hand on Ruby's.

"I want to thank you," Glynda said. In the starlit night, Ruby's brilliant silver eyes shone brightly. "For all the help you've given me, and for helping me get acclimated." 

Ruby brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes and smiled, at the picnic basket. "Of- of course. What are neighbors for?" 

Ruby took a breath. "And, I, do like spending time with you." 

Ruby herself took a sip from her alcoholic drink and sputtered, once. 

"Do you think you'll ever go back to the city?" Ruby said. 

"Maybe for a trip," Glynda said, "My farmstead's too developed to leave it alone too long, and I don't miss living in the city, but there's a few things that might be fun to see again." 

"Is there a lot that you miss, there?"

"Well," Glynda said, and she looked into Ruby's eyes. "There's a lot of things that I wouldn't mind sharing with someone...."

Ruby smiled. "Is that an invitation?" 

"If you want it to be," Glynda said. 

And then, in the beautiful tapestry of the night sky, for but a moment, was a shooting star. 

Glynda beamed in silence at an astral phenomenon she had known much about but never seen in person. 

Ruby gasped. "Woah!" she said. 

Glynda smiled. "That is correct." 

"So, we get to make wishes, right?" Ruby said, still looking up at the sky. 

Glynda stifled a giggle. "I think that is the traditional thing to do." 

"Well, then," Ruby scrunched her mouth to the side. "I wish for a cookie." 

Glynda laughed. "Is that all?" 

"Well," Ruby leaned over to the picnic basket, and she pulled out a cookie, "I got my wish." 

"Touche." 

Ruby offered Glynda a cookie as she chewed on her own. Glynda was as big on sweets, but she nibbled her gifted treat all the same. 

"How about you?" Ruby said.

Glynda took another drink from the failed kombucha.

"Im going to say," Glynda turned to Ruby, "True love." 

Ruby chuckled, reflexively. "Oh? Doing the opposite of what I did, then?" 

And Glynda sat up, slightly, to turn her body towards the adorable woman lying next to her. "You don't think I'm going to get my wish?" 

Ruby's cheeks tinted. She looked up into Glynda's eyes. 

Glynda leaned over Ruby's reclined form, putting her hand on the other side of Ruby's head. 

Ruby bit her lip and glanced at Glynda's mouth. "Well, maybe you will...." 

And then they smooched. 

**Author's Note:**

> Not to stereotype, but I feel like Kombucha is the ultimate indicator of urban hipsterdom.


End file.
